The Government is scrapping the 70-year-old law designed to protect our native wildlife, saying it lacks purpose and does not offer adequate protection to our threatened reptiles, birds and fish.
Work will now start on a replacement for the Wildlife Act, which environmentalists say is urgently needed to halt the rapid decline of native species.
"These species evolved over 80 million or so years in the absence of mammalian predators, in the absence of people, it's only in the last 800 years that people have been," Environmental Defence Society CEO Gary Taylor says.
More than three quarters of our native birds, bats, reptiles and freshwater fish are deemed "at risk" of dying out, but the Wildlife Act, which is meant to protect them, is out of date.
"It's bad law, it dates back to the 1950s," Taylor says.
"It doesn't reflect modern thinking, it doesn't reflect modern values."
Chair of Te Rūnanga Papa Atawhai o Te Tai Tokerau Nyze Manuel says it has no Treaty basis either.
"To become effective it needs to have the indigenous voices, around the planet actually need to have a say in this, because we're very connected," Manuel says.
A review of the Act by DoC found it doesn't prioritise species that are in trouble.
For example, no native fish species are protected, despite most of them being at risk or threatened with extinction.
It also fails to protect habitat important to the survival of marine species, or address bycatch of threatened marine species.
"So what we want to do is start again," Conservation Minister Willow-Jean Prime says.
"We want to repeal and replace this Act with an Act that is clear on its purpose, clear on its structures, clear on its processes so that we can protect biodiversity."
The Minister gives the example of a Supreme Court decision that ruled in favour of Stewart Island cage diving operators in 2019, saying that attracting great white sharks did not amount to "hunting or killing".
That's despite the Act defining "hunting or killing" as including the pursuit or disturbing of wildlife.
"We didn't have the mandate, the tools or the legal ability to provide that protection for the Great White Shark," Prime says.
Prime says the new law will give DoC the tools to better protect not only the creatures whose numbers are in decline, but the habitat they live in.
DoC will now develop policy advice for the Minister to report to Cabinet early next year, which will be followed by public consultation - including on how the new law can address threats like the impacts of climate change, invasive species and habitat loss.
Taylor says he hopes the much-needed law change can transcend party politics.
"I would hope that any incoming government would allow it to continue and support it," he says.
On behalf of the inhabitants of this country that don't have a vote, but rely on us to secure their future.
